


I Meant It

by JudeAraya



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, First Time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 05:27:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6502441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudeAraya/pseuds/JudeAraya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time since they were reaped, Katniss feels the freedom to love him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Meant It

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Everlarkficexchange.: "Prompt 53: The Train has stopped. Katniss looks at Peeta, sleeping beside her in the moonlight?" 
> 
> Thanks to @javistg for a) running this and b) beta work! Also, to the anon who prompted this, I promise the second half will get there :D

 

The morning after the first time they’re together Katniss rolls over and up against the warmth of Peeta’s body and rapidly realizes she’s naked. For a fleeing moment she’s completely disoriented, until her body remembers with a full flush, flooding her with memories of their bodies in the dark. The breath she takes is much too loud; Peeta wakes up to it and rolls over immediately. His hand finds her cheek in a gesture of familiar comfort, how he always touches her to calm her from a nightmare. By the way he freezes up, she thinks he must realize he’s naked too. Their eyes met and then they both look away, unsure of this new intimacy in the light of day. His skin against hers is warm and tempting to touch; still it’s almost too much.

Peeta laughs and kisses her, hard and quick. He pulls the sheet up further, over her shoulder, but ducks closer. “This is silly, isn’t it?” he asks. He keeps his eyes on hers but his hand slides over her hip and around her waist. Katniss shivers into the touch and smiles as easily as she can, just in case he feels the same shaky nerves she does.

“Yes,” she says, and then pauses. “Peeta?”

“Mm?” His eyes have slipped closed again.

“I meant it.”

In the hazing light of morning, his eyes are an unusual blue. Katniss could make a study of them, but he drops his gaze.

“That you love me?”

“Y-yes,” Katniss says. Peeta’s forearm is strong and thick under her gripping fingers. She forces herself to relax.

“You know I love you too, right?” he whispers. Katniss nods and tips forward into a shadow of a kiss. Then they both fall quiet until their breath syncs to the same rhythm and she’s sliding into a doze.

“I…have to go to the bathroom,” Peeta says after a bit. Shyness laces his voice and so Katniss smiles again, trying to mimic the assurance he always seems to manage for her easily.

“Okay.” She rolls over carefully and snuggles back into the pillow. Whatever happened the night before, she understands the vulnerability of seeing each other’s bodies in the light. They’ve seen most of each other before, in the arena. But it’s different now, with the memory of his hands all over her sensitive skin. That comfort will come in time.

He kisses her shoulder so softly she barely feels it and then leaves. She misses the weight of his body in the bed almost immediately but is infinitely grateful for a moment alone to revel in her memories. Katniss woke this morning feeling laced with light, like Peeta’s fingerprints had dappled her in sunlight. She wants him to always, always leave her glowing like this. Last night when his hands calmed the worst of her nightmare away, fingers in her hair, everything had felt like a dream. His shirt slipped off easily when she ran her hands up his back, and in the dark she’d read the story of fire on his skin. Slowly enough to let her stop him, Peeta too had pulled her shirt up, the backs of his knuckles trailing shivers through her body. It had been awkward but she’d shimmied out of it with his help. He didn’t touch her with his hands at first, which surprised her. He kissed her neck and then shoulder, down the center of her chest and then let his mouth linger just over her heart.

“It’s okay,” she said again. She said it over and over, with increased urgency and gasping breath, until the words became less about reassurance, but the only ones she had as pleasure wrecked through her.

Later that day they only touch lightly; rarely at first but slowly increasing in confidence. When Peeta takes her dish to the sink to clean it after dinner Katniss surprises herself by coming over to kiss his cheek in thanks. His eyes are lovely blue in the warm light of the kitchen and wide with surprise, so she kisses him again. It’s over in the blink of an eye, but the way he looks at her after wakes every part of her body.

The urgency between them, its newness and heady thrill, feels foreign to Katniss when she thinks about it in the light of day. What Peeta makes her want, how her body tingles and remembers his fingers light on her throat and all the way down over her chest and sensitive nipples, over the duller skin of her scars, feels alien. Something she didn’t know she would be capable of. The only measure for this desire are memories of two kisses they shared – one in the cave and one on the beach – that left her wanting more. She knows there is more they can show each other, and more they can do. Things she wants but simultaneously doesn’t want to rush. Katniss could glut herself on the sounds Peeta makes when she touches him; the way they do it now, each taking turns, works for her. Partly so she can learn, because Katniss hates feeling unsure and unskilled, but mostly because she loves focusing her attention on him.

For the first time since they were reaped, Katniss feels the freedom to love him. Peeta has trained steady and loving eyes on her for so long and Katniss wants him to know that steady warmth, to have her gaze spell know he’s infinitely loveable and worthy and everything to her. There’s not a part of his body she doesn’t want to kiss or to touch. When she kisses down his belly and pauses before kissing lower, his tentative hands in her hair are questions he’s unsure how to answer. Katniss knows this boy – her boy – well enough to know this. She covers his hand with hers, threading their fingers through her hair to show him it’s alright, and then kisses lower, until she’s settled between his legs with his pleasure warm in her mouth.

Despite the newness, the thrill she’s sure will change texture in time, she’s so comfortable and unafraid with Peeta it is it’s own kind of thrill. Sometimes, just before he kisses her or when she rolls her body under his, she wonders about it. She doesn’t linger though, because it is infinitely more pleasurable to linger over him. It’s not until Katniss wakes next to Peeta, naked and warm, two weeks later, that she remembers that night on the train.


End file.
